07 October, 2008

Remember the vintage French bars in the photo? They were a standard bar on countless French city and utility bikes for many decades. I wrote about wanting to make them again a few weeks ago. Here's what happened; I found it interesting.

I made some measurements and drew a rough sketch that we gave to our draftsman. He made a proper set of plans that we sent to our agent in Taiwan. The agent contacted several manufacturers.

The first manufacturer was a large company whose name you are certainly familiar with. They asked a large fee for tooling and a huge first order. The second company, a medium sized handlebar manufacturer, wanted a smaller amount for tooling and required a much smaller order. The third company was a new and rather small manufacturer who would absorb the cost of tooling and required an order of only 200 bars. Their per piece cost was a bit higher, but still reasonable.

Since this bar is narrow and very simple in shape I felt we could trust this new company with it. Besides, Tom had already worked on a project with them, in his former job, with good result.

We had almost settled on the third company when our agent sent us a new drawing that was virtually identical to the one we had sent her. It varied by 2-3mm in one or two dimensions. Obviously someone else had had the same idea as us. They had copied the same bar. It seems a fourth manufacture had once made these bars for an unknown company and so already had the tooling and experience to produce them. The cost was somewhat higher as was the minimum production run. But this company has a great reputation and we could skip all the prototypes and minor revisions and inevitable tooling delays.

We should have these bars in 60-90 days. They are narrow, about 44cm (O-T-O) for slipping through traffic. There is zero rise. The bar diameter is 23.8 to accept inverse levers or bar-end shifters. Clamp diameter is 25.4mm. Cost should be around $20.

So the question is, what should we call them? I'll offer a free set of these handlebars for the best suggestion!

I like the VO Pratique Bar. It's a nice simple, no nonsense, do anything bar. Like a more affilirdable version of the nitto albatross. I would love to see a shallower drop version of the soma walker or major Taylor bar. There was an NOS on that I saw at the Recyclery in Portland that was perfect.

I really like Christian's "staple" suggestion. Just to riff on that and add some french flavor:

French for staple is "agraffe", which is not very catchy, and kind of hard to pronounce. Why not call them "Graff Bars" as a americanization, and ignore the fact that everyone will think you are referring to the tennis player.

I know I probably wont win an awards with this one, but I really think "City Bar" would be best.

I know it isnt the most creative and we could stay french with something like "Guidon de Ville," but at the end of the day, i think most people looking for these bars will probably be googling "city bars". ( = more sales from non-VO blog subscribers! :)).

It might be fun to start naming them after Breton lighthouses, or say subregions of Bordeaux or towns in Calvados. Something a little more off-the-beaten-path than areas in Paris. (Personally there are very few things in the world that touch my sole like the wave-washed lighthouses off Finistiere, which for the most part have insanely cool Breton names. But dat's just me.)

In the French novel, when the narrator tastes a madeleine (a small, shell-shaped cake), long-forgotten memories are evoked. I think when people see these bars they'll remember their childhood in the French countryside, as well. Heh. ;)

Call them the Nord-Sud Handlebar. The Nord-Sud (North-South) was the Paris metro line that connected Montmartre to Montparnasse, two very important Parisian areas made famous with bohemian artists, poets and writers. Just the kind of people that used their bike daily!

Wow, 78 comments! I have no time to read them all yet, but I recognize something here that is very important in your story:

Innovation unlike true invention happens simultaneously across the board. It's very common for people to think they're unique or thinking uniquely... this leads to a tremendous amount of duplication of effort.

I've learned this because it is extremely apparent in the software world. And so it rings true in manufacturing as well.

Do new transparency and so called "hyper-connectivity" we have more of an opportunity than ever to pool our resources as is most apparent with open source software to create a new type of innovation.

This is an effect that works backwards or toward such macro-economic trends like market verticalization or the most apt "walmatization" effect.

In essence the big idea here is to create a new marketplace of ideas... a walmart of innovation.

In many ways this is what open source is to software... but that is just one of thousands of forms it might take... and what's more we must ask how would this apply to manufacuring, particularly in the bike world.

For now... this is it... you're doing it... blogs. Given time and the transparency of blogging... superb search, and other factors of the internet in a broad sense this is the marketplace I'm talking about... it is just ad-hock and non-explicit.. but right now it's getting the job done... as I can see very clearly from the 78 comments.